You just buried your mom and returned from the funeral. You’re a Project Manager on a high profile project for one of the largest tech companies in the world. It has only been one day since the funeral and you are still raw with emotion. Now imagine that you get an email informing you that you are not getting a break from the loss of your mom, but in fact, your workload has been increased. How about a spouse fighting cancer? Need a little time? No! Instead, how about an increased workload? Sound crazy? Well, imagine no more…these are true stories. This brings me to an important point.
In talking with a friend of mine with 26+ years of project management experience about Agile vs. Waterfall methods, he said, “You can have all the methods and processes you want but it all comes down to personal relationships and human intervention”. This gentleman was responsible for one of the largest SAP installations in US history. I was taken aback by the simple answer when he stated another simple cliché, “Take care of your team and your team will take care of you”, which means that they will take care of the project.
The examples given in the beginning of this blog are not meant to say that we shouldn’t be tough or suck it up. However, besides being in my opinion morally wrong, it is flat bad for business. Is the man whom just buried his wife still ready to climb that mountain for the team? Or, is he waiting for the first chance to jump ship?
All too often we pay lip service to our employees, “Let me know if you need any more resources”, while completely ignoring the realities of life.
I guess the bottom line is we can keep on pushing the machine, but what happens when the machine navigator gets ran over? Does the machine keep going and if so, who is driving…a robot?
Make sure when you ask someone if they need help that you don’t ignore the reality that is staring you right in the face — unless you like robots.
Time estimates are tricky
If you are an inexperienced project manager, engineer, or designer, consider tripling your initial time estimates for projects. That’s not a slam. It’s just that new managers don’t take a lot of minutia into consideration when developing project time estimates. Experienced people have been through a lot of project cycles. They have seen a lot, and the know the hundreds of little things that can bog a project down or extend it long beyond all normal estimates. So if you’re new, triple the schedule until you know the details.
7 Things You Need to Know About Development Project Estimations
Whether you are a project manager planning for a smooth implementation of a plan or a project sponsor on whose decisions a project depends, you cannot escape from the fact that project estimation is essential to its success. In the first place, there are three basic requirements that a project must satisfy: schedule, budget, and quality. The need to work within these essential project boundaries poses a huge challenge to everyone in the central management team.
There are various aspects that affect project estimates, such as team skills and experience levels, available technology, use of full-time or part-time resources, project quality management, risks, iteration, development environment, requirements, and most of all, the level of commitment of all project members.
Moreover, project estimations do not need to be too complicated. There are tools, methodologies, and best practices that can help project management teams, from sponsors to project managers, agree on estimates and push development efforts forward. Some of these include the following:
- Project estimates must be based on the application’s architecture. Making estimates based on an application’s architecture should give you a clear idea of the length of the entire development project phase. Moreover, an architecture-based estimation provides you a macro-level view of the resources needed to complete the project.
- Project estimations should also come from the ground up. All estimates must add up, and estimating the collective efforts of the production teams that work on the application’s modules helps identify the number of in-house and outsourced consultants that you need to hire for the entire project, as well as have a clear idea of the collective man-hours required to code modules or finish all features of the application. Ground-up estimates are provided by project team members and do not necessarily match top-level estimates exactly. In this case, it is best to add a percentage of architecture-based estimates to give room to possible reworks, risks, and other events that may or may not be within the control of the project staff.
- Do not forget modular estimates. Once you have a clear idea of the architecture, it becomes easier to identify the modules that make up the entirety of the application. Knowing the nature of these modules should help you identify which can be done in-house or onshore, or by an offshore development team. Moreover, given the location and team composition of each development team that works on a module, it becomes easier to identify the technical and financial resources needed to work on the codes.
- Development language matters. Whether the development language is Java, .Net, C++ or any other popular language used by software engineers, team that will be hired for the project must be knowledgeable in it. Some development efforts require higher skills in these languages, while some only need basic functional knowledge, and the levels of specialization in any of these languages have corresponding rates. Most of the time, the chosen development language depends on the chosen platform, and certain platforms run on specialized hardware.
- You cannot promise upper management dramatic costs from offshoring. While there are greater savings from having development work done by offshore teams composed of workers whose rates are significantly lower from onshore staff, you must consider communication, knowledge transfer, technical set-up, and software installation costs in your financial estimates. Estimating costs is often more about managing expectations, but as the project matures, it should be clearer whether the money spent on it was money that was spent well.
- Project estimation software and tools help identify “what-if” scenarios. Over the years, project managers have devised ways to automate project schedule, framework, cost, and staffing estimates. Some estimation applications also have sample historical data or models based on real-world examples. If your business has a lot in common with the samples in the estimation tool, it can help you identify what-if scenarios and in turn include risks, buffers, and iteration estimates.
- Price break-down helps in prioritization. Breaking down the total cost of the project helps management decide which parts of a system should be prioritized, delayed, or even cancel. Estimating costs for a new project may not be easy, but project sponsors and managers must be able to know and agree on the breakdown of costs of development, technical requirements, and overhead.
By ExecutiveBrief -online resource on process management, project management, and process improvement.
Success Factors in Knowledge Management
Knowledge management professionals must keep in mind that KM’s explicit end-goal is profitability while its implicit purpose is to empower participants through intellectual platforms and processes that promote learning and practical knowledge.
Knowledge, without a doubt, plays an important role in the success of any organization. In fact, in order to maintain a competitive advantage, modern organizations incorporate knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, and knowledge management into their business processes. The mere survival of many organizations hinges on the strength of their capabilities; moreover, companies form decisions based on their relevant knowledge of their business landscapes.
Thanks to developments in information and communication technologies, it is now easier to develop, store, and transfer knowledge. This capability is particularly true among organizations with global workforces. After all, international competition and globalization are the driving forces behind most technological innovations, and companies quickly take advantage of these developments when it comes to managing the creation and flow of information.
“Ultimately, leveraging relevant knowledge assets to improve organizational performance is what knowledge management is all about,” says Murray E. Jennex in his book, Knowledge Management in Modern Organizations (2007). However, in spite of the lightning-speed creation of new knowledge and the improvements in communication technologies, many organizations still find that their knowledge management practices are lacking. Specifically, within client-consultant relationships, knowledge transfer does not always translate into better performance by all project team members, nor does it always translate into the successful delivery of projects.
To be successful, knowledge management programs require more than simply conducting training sessions or transferring knowledge. Practitioners must always remember that KM’s explicit end-goal is profitability – while KM’s implicit purpose is to empower participants by providing them with the intellectual platforms and processes that promote learning and practical knowledge.
Here are a few factors that contribute to successful knowledge management initiatives:
- Linkage between knowledge and economic performance – Knowledge management exists because it enables the organization to reach its business goals. Otherwise, there is no point in putting together all the best practices, tacit knowledge, and skill sets in a cohesive system that is accessible by all parties – when and where they need it. As business increasingly becomes more global, the competition for greater market share depends on the capabilities of its players to a certain degree. KM practitioners must be able to identify the business value of knowledge management in their organizations – whether it is to manage projects, provide back-office operations services or to give ideas on how processes can be better optimized – among others. In most consulting relationships, knowledge is the currency by which all transactions are made.
- Setting and communicating clear objectives for specific organizational or project levels – Heather Kreech, the Director of Knowledge Communications of the International Institute for Sustainable Development has some specific ideas on this very subject. In her paper, Success Factors in Knowledge Management (2005), she states that knowledge-sharing works best when knowledge managers “gather and communicate knowledge at the project/activity/field level before [they] begin to aggregate up to corporate systems and general knowledge marketing strategies”. Having a specific organizational level or project group in mind, results in better designed knowledge management systems, training programs, and tools that can meet the specific needs of workers.
- Having the appropriate systems and infrastructure – Ideally, knowledge is created, processed, stored, and archived. Managing the process of creating knowledge, communicating this knowledge to participants, and making knowledge available to anyone in the organization, means that an organization must have the right communication systems and data storage facilities. However, it is not enough to simply store knowledge as this knowledge must be found whenever it is needed. Thus, the availability of internal search facilities and computer-based training programs is critical.
- Having the right champions – KM initiatives need project and process champions who can rally the support of everyone – from top management down to individual staff members. Having management support can result in the freeing up of resources – such as financial, expertise, and infrastructure – all of which are critical to the successful implementation of KM projects. Financial backing means that KM managers can implement training programs, hire both internal and external specialists – as well as acquire the required infrastructure to manage training programs. On the other hand, access to experts from either within or outside the organization, means better identification of knowledge gaps and training requirements, and more importantly, engineering training and communication programs that meet the said needs.
By ExecutiveBrief
Technology Management Resource for Business Leaders
http://www.executivebrief.com
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Vicarious Goal Completion
Bear with me… Vicarious Goal Completion is a pretty obscure title, but there’s logic to it. 🙂
Psychologists have observed a strange human peculiarity. And it relates directly to project management. It’s called Vicarious Goal Completion. Researchers first encountered it while studying fast food menus. Can I get you to bite?
When fast food menus contain a “Salad” choice or other healthy food items, people purchase the junk food instead!
Here’s why: People who see healthy items on a menu feel good about their weight loss goals and give themselves permission to indulge a little. So, they eat the burger and fries instead. In other words, they remember eating good and believe they have already attained their goals, so that gives them permission to splurge. The goals are completed vicariously through the menu itself.
Obviously, this is just a slick way of tricking oneself into dodging responsibility. They used to call this laziness. Any excuse to pig out.
I’ve notice the same behavior with software downloads and project tasks. The ratio of downloads to form-completions is pitifully low. In other words, people take the time to fill out a download form, but never actually install and test the software. Vicarious Goal Completion! The person believes they have finished the job, when in fact, they have only just begun. Filling out the form gives them a warm fuzzy feeling about the goal of procuring software, and that warm feeling is enough to satisfy them. They don’t actually care if they download, install, and test. They have met their goals and that’s all that matters.
The same is true of project management. Beware of employees who start tasks, but never complete them. Once a task is started, good feelings arise. Those good feelings give the employee permission of quit because they feel they have already finished, or full completion is within sight. Vicarious Goal Completion! Nobody likes to take their project tasks to the uttermost level of completion – unless forced to do so.
–ray
Technologies that Matter in a Slow Economy
Bare-bones hardware and software, and all things virtual dictate the game of computing in a slow economy.
A recent advertisement by Microsoft caused a stir among the Mac-loving community of tech workers. The ad shows a flame-haired Lauren looking for a 17-inch laptop for under $1,000. The challenge is that if she finds one that meets her specifications, she gets to keep the laptop and the change from the $1,000. And so she first goes to a Mac store where the only thing that falls within her budget is a 13-inch Macbook. Slightly dejected, she drives off and along the way says the line that struck a raw nerve among Mac fans and probably Apple itself: “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.”
She enters another computer store where she finds two laptops that meet her needs on top of her 17-inch monitor requirement for only $699. The ad ends with the line, “I’m a PC and I got just what I needed.”
Ever since the TV spot came out, the Mac community has been up in arms, dismissing all things PC and the operating system that most of the time goes with it. However, pundits believe that no matter how “cool” Mac may be, the deciding factor for buying PC is price point. When things are tough and everyone is worrying about their finances, notwithstanding the availability of disposable income for some, people are conscious about the amount of money they spend on technology.
The same is true whether one is buying technology services, software, or hardware. As the world gets on with the current crisis, technology is responding at rapid speed to manage the needs of individual and enterprise tech buyers everywhere.
So what are the technologies that actually matter in this climate? Here are a few:
Virtualization – Video conferences, virtual meetings, and screen sharing are just a few of the ways the tech world is replacing bricks-and-mortar or traditional modes of conducting daily business. Virtualization makes it possible for workers to overlap work schedules across different time zones and collaborate on projects that are stored in different parts of the globe. Moreover, telecommuting becomes a trend even–or especially–among large enterprises who benefit from lower overhead costs and thankful workers who are happy to skip daily commutes and save on gas. Who needs to be physically present at the office when you can access your virtual desktop hosted by an outsourced data center?
Cloud Computing – Technology suppliers, from Microsoft to Sun to Amazon to startups, have embraced cloud computing as the next wave of business technology service. Buyers need applications and services that can be deployed as soon as possible and with as little maintenance required. Cloud computing also eliminates the need to build armies of engineers to create applications that can be “rented” anyway.
Enterprise Telecommunications – Businesses are getting savvier when it comes to enterprise communication, that any meeting, conference, or messaging that can be done via BlackBerry, VoIP, or company-supported IMs is welcome. Those that can invest in infrastructure requirements to put these technologies in place for two reasons: (1) to minimize the cost of or need for business travel and (2) to facilitate seamless communication among workers from different locations.
Open-Source – In early February, the British government released a policy that emphasized preference for open-source over proprietary software in order to cut down cost on technology spending. With proper due diligence, the move is surely to be copied by various industries everywhere in the quest to manage operating costs while remaining productive and responsive to customer demands.
Bare-Bones Hardware – The popularity of netbooks can be attributed to its portability, and a more so to a much friendlier price point. As software and file management move to the clouds and storage becomes cheaper, tech buyers, such as Lauren in the Microsoft commercial, realize that they only have to spend on what they need. Who cares about the cool factor when they have to spend their money wisely? In early March, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the company’s plans to deliver the “netbooks” of servers that sport features that meet minimal storage and network management needs of businesses.
By ExecutiveBrief
The X, Y, and Z’s of Product Development
A certain thing happens in product development… (It used to bug me to death, until I got used to it.) Your product development team just finishes a great new feature. Everybody rejoices. Good feelings, pride, and celebrations. All that… The new release is posted on the web, and you start to get downloaders. Potential customers are giving it a look. And you know they are seeing the great new feature you just added. It has “X” and “Y” new things. Everyone will love it. Everyone will buy. You’re sure of that! Finally… we’ve gotten a great product out there…
The next thing you know, you get an email from an evaluator. He can’t believe how short-sighted your product is. In fact, he’s practically indignant. It’s missing a key feature he needs, and he can’t belive you’d ever consider shipping a product without it.
He asks, “Can you do it? When will it be available?
“Maybe, next month. Can you describe it more fully?”
“Oh, I can’t wait that long… Forget it.”
The situation is that you’ve completed “X” and “Y” but haven’t gotten to “Z” yet. And that’s what spoiler-boy wants. Problem is, you never considered “Z” until you completed “X” and “Y.” Or worse yet, didn’t consider it until he pointed it out.
This is so common. People cannot see to very down the product road-map. That’s human nature. They can see “X” and “Y” but only have fuzzy glimpses of “Z.” That is, until some grumpy customer complains that it’s not in the product. He doesn’t see the hard work you put into getting the first releases out. I.e. getting “X” and “Y” out. He just sees that “Z” is missing, and feels pretty certain that he can’t do without it. He’ll move on… Somebody out there must have it. “I’ll look around…” he says.
Better get cracking. Again…
–ray
Let the Client Be Your Project Leader
Customer-driven project management uses the voice of the client as a guide at every turn of the project’s life cycle to achieve optimum quality.
Project teams that put the interest of their clients are assured of repeat businesses and long-term relationships. They know that at the end of the day, their processes and methodologies are established to meet clients’ expectations. And meeting clients’ expectations hopefully means satisfaction.
It has always been the goal of project teams to complete projects on time within cost and fulfill quality criteria, but it has often been the case that when projects are implemented, project teams focus on their tasks more and lose sight of their relationships with clients. Now, thanks to the current dynamics of an increasingly demanding business environment, the management concept of too much organizational and process control that on many occasions resulted in alienating customers is slowly giving way to a marriage of disciplined process implementation and customer satisfaction. And by satisfaction, it means giving more than what is required.
Customer-driven project management uses the voice of the client as a guide at every turn of the project’s implementation process to achieve optimum quality. According to Bruce T. Barkley and James H. Saylor in their book Customer-Driven Project Management (2001), this management approach involves the following items, which we expand to meet the more complex needs of today’s client-supplier relationships:
Customer-driven project management does not veer far from many project management approaches. However, client leadership and continuous improvement through the team’s feelings of ownership of the project spell the difference between just finishing tasks and pleasing the customer.
By ExecutiveBrief
Technology Management Resource for Business Leaders
http://www.executivebrief.com
The Key Success Factors in IT Business Alignment
As business needs help set IT’s priorities, how IT departments align their solutions with business objectives hinge on a number of success factors.
The most pressing issue among CIOs, according to a 2008 survey by Society for Information Management (SIM) is the alignment—or misalignment—of IT with business. As IT departments need to consolidate their resources, there is a growing concern among CIOs that doing so may not be so easy. One cause of this issue is that tech workforces are seen as merely solutions provider instead of as strategic resources to achieve business success. Meeting business expectations effectively should be the goal of IT, but more importantly, of business
There are several approaches that can be taken to align IT with business. Some approaches focus on the roles of individual IT contributors, while others focus on the needs of the business side and their position in the market. It is up to CIOs to identify key business needs and turn these needs into objectives that their IT organizations must achieve. CIOs also have the responsibility to build organizations that can deliver the right support to various project portfolios.
IT departments are there not just to provide computing solutions. Businesses will get more value from IT by considering their operational and strategic business needs. As business requirements help set IT’s priorities in terms of identifying resources, form insourcing and outsourcing strategies, and set up infrastructures, how IT departments implement their chosen approaches hinge on the following success factors:
- Open communication lines. IT departments and their business counterparts should set up a communication system that actively involves all stakeholders. This allows IT to get a feedback from the business side to formulate the best solutions possible; on the other hand, an open communication line with their technical counterparts familiarize business decision-makers to identify and take advantage of the available technical knowledgebase for better organizational and market performance.
- Business requirements analysis. IT’s exposure to business allows them to identify business needs that should be the key drivers behind most aspects of their operations. CIOs are best positioned to frame projects, infrastructures, and systems according to the needs of their primary clients. The success of IT as a business strategy is judged on how it helped in meeting business objectives.
- Expectation management. Both sides should be realistic about their expectations of each other. This can be achieved through the two mentioned success factors: communication and requirements. Business managers should know the limitations of IT, and that solutions do not come in cheap, such that in-house resources for application development and maintenance may require engaging third-parties to fulfill business needs. On the other hand, IT should be aware of the technical—and sometimes, financial—limitations of business operations. For example, introducing new systems to the IT enterprise landscape means training batches of end-users which then result in additional work to include end-user documentation and training designs.
- Organizational protocols and sponsorship. Internal protocols do affect the success of IT-business alignment. Sadly, protocols do not necessarily mean processes; protocols in most traditional institutions mean “just how things are done.” To navigate through layers of bureaucracy where it exists is to identify key personnel and project sponsors who understand and can articulate the justifications for IT projects as business strategies. Where all decision-makers must stamp their signatures in all IT ventures, CIOs should find the right people to champion their causes through coherent analyses of business needs and presentations of business solutions and the hoped-for success criteria.
At the end of the day, most of the work rest on the shoulders of CIOs, being the key figures that understand the business side of things and have the ability to translate business needs into technology solutions.
By ExecutiveBrief
Technology Management Resource for Business Leaders
www.executivebrief.com
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Building a Project’s Business Case
Forward-looking project managers realize that to avoid failure, they should build the business case for their projects by getting intimately knowledgeable about the reasons why sponsors approved their projects.
Too many projects get the axe because of the lack of business cases that justify their existence. When project sponsors begin to see projects only in terms of costs instead of potential rewards, there are higher chances that the projects would be canceled.
It is not the job of the project manager to build the business case. Ideally, project stakeholders and sponsors evaluate the business value and possible ROI from a project. If the project is seen in terms of generating income or reducing cost, the project will have the green light. This is the situation in the ideal world, but this scenario happens a lot less than one would like to believe.
Forward-looking project managers realize that to avoid failure, they should build the business case for their projects by getting intimately knowledgeable about the reasons why sponsors approved their projects. A project manager should work closely with clients, sponsors and other stakeholders, and ask the following questions:
What problems should the project address?
By interviewing project sponsors, the project manager can determine their goals and discuss the issues that the project would solve. In addition to project sponsors, the ones who are dealing with the issues at the workplace, perhaps on a daily basis, are a good source of ideas about the extent and many facets of the problem. Looking at day-to-day challenges from end-users’ point of view enables the project manager to get a better handle of the requirements of the project in terms of design and technical upgrades, as well as in terms of how it will solve end-user problems.
What are the strategic goals of the project?
Is it an easier system? Increased productivity? Better networking? Conversion to a marketable product? No matter what it the goals are, they must also come from and supported by the end-users. At the end of the day, it will all boil down to the business value of the project. And by business value, it means cost reduction, better productivity, and the possibility of selling the product or service to the wider public. Make sure that the goals are clear and the project’s objectives must reflect these goals.
What are the project’s basic requirements and what can end-users live without?
Aside from building the requirements based on the needs of its users, the project manager should also build the projects’ technical and design requirements and ask what bells and whistles it should have. The project may have a lot of feature that do not have business justifications, resulting in features that took too long to build. Separating needs from fluff allows the project manager to formulate requirements, identify scope, and allocate resources that are important in creating a working version of the project. The quicker the iteration, the better the chances are of project survival.
What is the project’s ROI?
Even at the early stage of the project, it is possible to envision ballpark ROI figures. Because all projects incur costs, a project manager should have a fair idea of when investments will be recovered and generate positive cash flow.
By ExecutiveBrief
Technology Management Resource for Business Leaders
www.executivebrief.com